Finding You (27 page)

37 - Charlie

‘So ... you never got to speak to him?’ Rob shoulders his overnight bag, his back all hunched, and when I turn to look at my brother, he’s got the same slightly hungry feeling about him that I felt earlier speaking to that nurse, desperate to know what our father’s last words were.  

‘He didn’t regain consciousness during the time I was there, Rob. I wasn’t in there too long, myself, before he ...’ I trail off and my brother nods curtly. He’s not got too much to say this morning. He’s still shocked and upset. He arrived there an hour after I did, and by then, it was all over. We’ve spent the last two hours doing ... I don’t know exactly what we’ve been doing. Waiting for papers to be signed, I think. Waiting for Rob to be able to tear himself away. The time has passed too rapidly. They’d have let us stay longer, but I think they needed the room and now it’s ... already eight-thirty in the morning.

It’s a bright blue, beautiful sunny morning, and the pavements as we walk along, heading away from the hospital, have all got that washed-clean-like-brand-new look after the storms last night. There are a few battered flower stalks here and there, but everything feels fresher somehow. Peaceful, although we have lost Dad; it is as if everything is as it should be. Pretty much as it was the perfect October morning that my son was born.

‘Have you got hold of home yet?’ Rob reminds me. He phoned Eva to give her the news pretty much as soon as he knew it. She’d been waiting up all night apparently, to hear.

I shake my head. No, I have not.

‘I tried several times but no one’s picking up. They had a very late night last night,’ I add by way of putting him off, but I’m aware of my own growing feeling of discomfort that no one is answering the phone. When Julia and I said goodbye last night, so many things had been left up in the air.
So many things
... I’d left her smarting and my boy whimpering on the stairs; there had been no time for anything more. The overwhelming feeling I’d had that I should not leave them then,
that I must not leave them like that,
had been one I’d ignored. As I try my home number again, it returns to haunt me, echoing back to me in the sound of the phone ringing and ringing in that empty hallway. Come on, Jules! You were angry with me last night but you still offered to come, you still cared enough about me. I know you’d not just ignore me now out of spite.  
Why are you not picking up my calls?

‘Everything okay?’ My brother’s sharp, picking up my distress. I can see it in the way his eyes narrow. ‘They could be still sleeping maybe?’ he offers.

I press the
end call
function, considering the possibility. Is it likely that my two will still be tucked up in bed? Not really. I glance at my watch again. I suppose it is even remotely possible that Julia has already gone out. Maybe she’s taken Hadyn down to the corner shop to get some milk for breakfast? Or gone out for a walk to clear her head, not expecting any news from me quite so soon?  I tuck my head down, hands in my pockets, not really knowing what to say to my brother.  Whether to share with him what a shit-load of trouble I am in.

I want to, suddenly. I find I want to talk to someone, only, Rob’s got to be the
last
person I’d want to bring all this up with. Rob’s a staunch family man. He’s like all the rest of my people: I know what he’d say about what I did. I don’t have to ask him. He’d think me a real arsehole. After all Julia and I went through, what’s he going to think if he learns I let Lourdes persuade me to go for a paternity test? I rub at my temples, the peace I had been feeling on leaving my father’s side at the hospital rapidly fading, my head starting to throb.

Jeez. What kind of a stupid mess did I get myself into there? Confessing it all to Rob isn’t going to help, either. I don’t know what it would serve; it’d only compound my troubles.

‘I need to get some shut-eye, Rob.’ When I shoot him a glance, Rob’s unshaven and a little unkempt today, as anyone would be who’s travelled through the night. ‘I’m guessing you do, too?’

‘Na,’ he says. ‘I need some coffee. Not sleep. Not now.’

It’s not what
I
want, but I understand. He’s shocked. He’s grieving and he wants ...
something
, even though he doesn’t know yet quite what. Perhaps he wants to talk about old times; he needs to talk about Dad? In a café off a side street, the aroma of the fresh-ground coffee they’re serving tempts us in. We order breakfast—croissants and toast and eggs—and in the end, we sit there for a good couple of hours, Rob and me. We end up sharing far more than I would have imagined we’d ever share, harking back to the people we used to be, laughing and—on one occasion or two—even crying.

‘Only us left, Carlos,’ he tells me. ‘We’re the front-runners, now. The ones at the front of the conveyer belt out of this life, we’ll be next. Are we getting that old?’ His son Giorge has just discovered his girlfriend’s pregnant. Rob’s going to be a granddad. ‘One out, one in,’ he says after a bit, surfacing from the shock, feeling a little more sanguine. ‘And you ... how’s your boy doing? The psychologist you told me about, she’s helping you and Julia with him, yes?’

I nod, busying myself with the coffee pot now that he’s brought Julia back into my mind again.  It’s eleven a.m already. I have already tried several more times to get hold of her back home and though I’ve tried to be discreet about it, made light of the fact that she’s not picking up, he’s noticed it.
Why the heck didn’t we get her mobile replaced sooner after Hadyn dropped it down the toilet?

‘No luck, heh?’ He shoots me a significant look. ‘You know, she could always ring you if she’d a mind to,
hermano
. There is nothing wrong with your mobile, is there?’

‘She might think I’ve got it switched off. Affects the instrumentation in the ICU and all that ...’

‘She might. Eva said she’d ring through to reception if she couldn’t get hold of me. People always find a way to contact you when they want to,’ he adds meaningfully.

‘You’re saying you think maybe she doesn’t want to?’ I say it like a joke, give a little laugh to keep it light, but Rob just gives me a look. The kind of look he’d give me when we were kids and he knew I was in trouble and he wasn’t saying anything but he
knew
... and I’d know he knew.

I swallow, toying with the sugar sachets in their bowl. So, what does he know now?

‘Look,’ I admit quietly, ‘Julia and I ... we had
words
last night.’

‘Had words?’ My brother’s expression is deadpan and I wonder if he even knows what I mean. His Spanish is far more excellent than mine, but his English...

‘You mean, you fought with her?’

‘No. I did not fight with her, but she ...’ She fought with me. She yelled at
me
. ‘We ... look,’ I hang my head, sheepish, ‘I did a very foolish thing, Rob. More than foolish.
Idiotic.
Stupid beyond belief. I was going to tell Jules, but she found out about it before I got to do that, and now I’m in trouble with her.’

My brother nods, his serious dark eyes trained on mine, taking this in. ‘Much trouble?’ he asks.

I nod, a small gallows laugh escaping from my lips. ‘I’m in so much trouble that I’m pretty sure she wants to split up with me.’ I glance up at him, expecting a look of shock-horror on his face at this revelation, expecting a look of dismay, deep disappointment,
anything
, but it is not there. Is it the emotional toll of our dad just passing away this morning that has drained him of any natural reaction? My brother picks up his coffee cup, matter-of-fact.  A good time to bury some bad news, then?

‘I did something last year with ... with Lourdes.’ I shoot a look at his eyes but again, no surprise there.

‘We had all assumed that you did,’ he says with the ghost of a smile.

‘Not
that.
’ I lean in a little as the waitress passes us, smiling, an
everything okay
? question hovering about her lips, but I don’t give her eye contact and she leaves. ‘I didn’t do that.’ Maybe better if I had done that, I think now. It might have been more forgivable. ‘I did something else,’ I get out, barely able to bring myself to say the words. ‘And then yesterday—when Julia met up with her, Lourdes
told
her.’

Will that be enough, I wonder? Enough of a confession to satisfy him and he won’t pry? I cringe just to think about it. Every time I remember, I feel such a fool.

‘About Hermosa?’ my brother asks without batting an eyelid.

I stare at him.
Shit.

I splutter, and the coffee I’ve just sipped goes everywhere, all over the table, the wrong way down my throat. He knows, too. Oh bloody hell! ‘You know?’ I feel myself blustering, but my brother calmly hands me a napkin off the table.

‘That you went to the clinic?’ He looks away for a moment, as if slightly embarrassed for me. ‘We all knew, Carlos. Lourdes wasn’t exactly discreet about it. Not with the family, anyway. I assumed you knew she’d been talking.’ He seems a little uncomfortable now. ‘I’m sorry you weren’t made aware of that fact.’

Is my face really flaming? I’ve not felt that sensation since I was a boy. For fuck’s sake.  I shoot him a painful look, racked with guilt but realising, now that I’ve told him, my brother’s judgement on what I did is the least of my troubles. Julia’s the one I really need to worry about.

‘I was a real prick,’ I berate myself. ‘How could I have done that to her, Rob?’

‘Hey, hey. It’s understandable, what you did.’ My brother shrugs—
it’s nothing
. ‘Any man would have done it under the circumstances.
I
would.’

‘You would?’ I stare at him ‘
Why?
’

‘A mother is the only parent who can ever be sure of her own child, right?’ he says, pragmatic now. ‘A father ...’ he gives a wry grin, ‘We have to take it on trust. And you two hadn’t known each other all that long when she announced she was expecting ...’

‘No ... no, it wasn’t that. I didn’t do it for that reason, but—how must it look?’

‘Bad,’ my brother agrees. He gives me a curious look now. ‘So, why
did
you do it, Carlos?’

‘I only did it because I couldn’t bear the hurt of knowing he was lost to me, Rob! The only child it was likely I’d ever father. My miracle child, my
beloved
...’ I gulp down the salty, stinging tears that have sprung to my throat, and my brother lays his hand on mine.

‘You did it to prove that he
wasn’t
yours?’ he asks softly. I can tell that he is slightly astonished at this admission. It wasn’t what he was expecting.   

‘I took it because I thought if there was some way I could prove he wasn’t mine, then ... then I’d know I hadn’t lost my son.’ In some ways, that’s even worse, I see now. ‘How must that look to Julia?’

‘Very bad. And Lourdes’ reason for suggesting it in the first place?’ he asks, suddenly thoughtful.  ‘You think she had the same reason as you?’

‘That’s what she said.’ I look at him, and my brother covers his face with his hands.   

‘I never considered myself an expert on women but you, brother ...’ he shakes his finger at me, ‘you take the prize.’ I look away from him and he continues. ‘Lourdes hoped to win you back. We all knew what she was about. You must have seen it, surely?’

Had I not seen it? I had.

But I’d told myself she understood. That she accepted that we could only ever be friends. I’d thought she
was
being a friend when she’d suggested Hermosa.  

‘And why?’ I breathe when I get my voice back, taking in the other thing he’s just said to me. ‘Why would Lourdes go round telling everyone, Rob?’ I thought she was my friend. I thought she suggested it because she cared about me.

‘Jealous women. Watch out for them,’ Rob says pragmatically, helping himself to some of the fresh toast that’s been brought to the table. I watch my brother, eyes widening. How can he eat?

‘Jealous?’ My mouth drops open a little. ‘Why would she be jealous?
She
left
me
, Rob, all those years ago. It wasn’t the other way round.’

‘She still hoped to get with you again,’ he suggests. I know that much is true.

‘You’re saying she had an ulterior? If it was proved the child wasn’t mine, there’d be no chance I’d ever get back with Julia again?’ I don’t like to think that was her real motive, instead of the one she gave me. I hate to think it, but it is starting to ring so true...

‘Of course.’ I smack my head with my hand. ‘And ... that’s how Jules will see it, too.’

‘Quite possibly,’ he agrees. ‘Now she’s had a chance to think about it. She’s not picking up the phone for you this morning, is she?’ he observes.

She isn’t. When I check the time, there’s no way I can keep telling myself that my two are still sleeping. Either she’s deliberately avoiding me or else she’s taken him away somewhere, to her mum’s house or ... My throat tightens.  Julia might have had another reason for wanting to take Hadyn away. There’d already been another bone of contention brewing between us before I left, I know.

‘You two need to sort out what’s gone wrong between you, that’s all. How can the boy get back to normal with all this going on?’

He doesn’t see it. My brother doesn’t see it; he thinks that this is recoverable. Last night, I had not clearly seen it, either. I thought I’d find some way to make Julia listen to me, but as I’ve recounted the facts to Rob this morning, the reality of it has become more starkly obvious.